Tufa The Price of One

Crazy sand tufa formations at Mono Lake, Ca. Took this about half hour to an hour after sunset in order to catch a little bit of the left over light from the day. Sunset light lingered on the horizon to the left, while a distant town lit up the horizon to the right. This formation is probably only a foot tall, but getting low and wide makes for a much more impressive view. It's the most elaborate sand castle you will ever see. All of these will eventually be underwater again, if the plan goes accordingly. LA drained the lake partially, revealing these formations which were under water. The plan is to bring it back to a determined level, which will put these out of site... necessary, but will be sad to see them go!

Was a complex shot to take! My camera was very close to it, and I had to shoot and focus stack 6 shots with varying focus points to get complete depth of field. Not only that, because of how small these were, I had to mount my camera upside down on my tripod to get it as close to the ground as possible, and then angle up. Try doing that, setting your focus points, all your camera settings, taking a shot, reviewing it on the lcd to check for sharpness, all in almost complete darkness, upside down. Yeah... not easy! I also placed a diffused light source to the distant left to add contrast to the formation. My genius flashlight in a white nalgene bottle trick. :)